Even though Studio J® is fast and easy to use, it is helpful to know some great tricks that can make customizing your layouts even more exciting. Here are some Studio J tricks straight from our professional Close To My Heart artists:

1. Customize your background and texture paper. You can change the color and intensity of the background and texture paper included in whichever kit you choose. Simply select the piece of background and texture paper, change the color in the color selection tool, and increase or decrease the intensity of the color in that same popup box.

2. Crop My Stickease® quotes, titles, and tags. The cropping feature on the My Stickease images allows you to select a section of a quote, title, or tag to use as a border or other embellishment.

3. Create a customized My Stickease image. If you have a specific image in mind to use as an embellishment on your page, you can create a customized My Stickease to fit your theme perfectly. Simply add a text box, photo hanger, ribbon, ribbon slides, and Stickease to create the little suitcase! So easy! Be sure to crop or send elements behind other elements when necessary, and add several elements together for a unique look!

4. Select more than one element at a time. If you want to move several elements of your layout at once, simply click and drag your mouse around the elements you would like to select. Let’s take buttons, for example. After the buttons have been selected, you can click the icons in the popup box to choose to align the buttons vertically or horizontally if you desire.

5. Make faux washi tape with vellum text boxes. To create the look of a piece of clear washi tape, make a small rectangular text box, filled with vellum background (this is the default color for text boxes). You can make the tape strips as large or small as you want, or even layer them for more emphasis.

6. Stretch one photo across multiple photo wells. If you have fewer photos than photo wells, instead of deleting the excess wells, try scaling the picture to a larger size and then copying the picture to other photo wells and matching the photos up until they align with an almost seamless image. This trick works best with photo wells that are adjacent to each other.

7. Create ruffled ribbon. Select “Ribbons” in the drop-down menu under the Embellishments toolset. Choose ribbon tab and rotate the tab so that it is vertical on the page. Then layer several tabs on top of one another, sending every other one to the back to create a ruffled look.

8. Create a jagged border with text boxes. You can create a jagged border simply by rotating multiple text boxes about 45 degrees and making them the same color as the background. Put these boxes on top of a long, rectangular box of another color, and you’ve got a jagged border!

9. Change the background of your layout. Sometimes you may like the photo and journal arrangement in a layout, and yet want to change the background colors. Because photos sit on top of everything else, this is easy to do. Simply pull a journaling box over the space you want for a different background and fill it with a color from the color selection tool or a patterned paper from the Papers toolset. Then, send it backwards until the photo wells are on top of your new background.

Bonus Trick! Use keyboard keys to make embellishments. Did you know that some of the best tools for creating custom embellishments are the basic keys on your keyboard? It’s as simple as typing into a journaling box with no background color. Use periods to make a polka dot pattern, angle brackets to create a trendy Chevron look, overlapping pound signs to make burlap, question marks to make rope, and so much more!

Try these tricks on your own Studio J®layouts. Click here to check it out. October is the perfect month to give it a go because for every 9 layouts you create, you’ll get a 10th layout for FREE!

Join me on Sunday August 5th from 2:00 – 4:00 in the afternoon for some yummy refreshments and creativity with the new Close To My Heart Cricut “Artiste” cartridge. We’ll make a couple of fun projects, explore the new Autumn/Winter 2012 Idea Book and check out the awesome new updates to Studio J.

There are so many fabulous new products, I can hardly wait to show you! I will also have some of the new products on hand in case you just can’t wait to order.

Memberships are retiring! On October 1st all membership accounts will be converted to non-member accounts.

All kits and patterns will be available to everyone!

Non member price lowered from $13 to $6.95!

Free J-Pegs with all purchased layouts.

J-pegs available as a stand alone purchase for $2.95 (reduced from $3.95).

Existing memberships were not charged for renewal starting on July 1st.

On October 1st all existing memberships will be credited 1 free layout for each month remaining in their membership starting July 1st. For example, my membership expires on Jan 1st. I will receive 7 free layouts for July–January (I get one for January even though my membership expires on the 1st).

Studio J layouts will be able to be purchased on a gathering order, and will count toward Hostess Rewards.

Studio J layouts will be able to be purchased using Hostess Rewards!

AND…..introducing Express Collections! 6 professionally designed, fully embellished, themed albums…..all you need to do is drag and drop your photos and add journaling. It’s never been easier to create fabulous albums for your precious memories! Of course if you want to customize the layouts, you can still change the colors and add additional text making them uniquely yours.

Layouts can be mixed and matched….use layouts from several Express Collections and even your own custom Studio J layouts to complete your project…..the choice is yours.

I think you will agree that these changes to Studio J are GREAT! If you haven’t tried Studio J….now is the time! Click on the photo below to visit Studio J. Create a free account and check out the great patterns, kits and express collections just waiting for your photos.

Hi! I’M BACK!!! Life has been so busy lately with being full-time Nana to my youngest 2 grandchildren, summer family activities and Close To My Heart’s annual CONVENTION!!!

I just got home late Sunday night from a fabulous few days in Dallas with about 1300 Close To My Heart consultants.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Leadership Day on the day before convention started and I’m anxious to bring some of the fun ideas that I learned about to Kathy’s Creative Corner……watch for more about monthly clubs coming soon!

The new Autumn/Winter Idea Book was unveiled and I can’t wait for you all to see it. IT’S BEAUTFUL and packed FULL of fun and fabulous new goodies.

Here’s a summary of the highlights:

NEW Cricut Artiste Collection, another amazing cartridge with 700 images!

Studio J Express Collections albums.

Elimination of Studio J memberships. Now EVERYONE gets the same low price for layouts ($6.95/two page layout) and access to ALL kits and patterns!

Who doesn’t love a chance to get something for FREE?! The “Crafting Chicks” are giving away a Studio J 5 pack AND a faux leather album! All you have to do is visit their site and become a follower to be entered.

Even if you don’t win this time, visit Studio J and check out the world of digital scrapbooking CTMH style. You can “test drive” it for free with no obligation to buy anything. If you decide that you want to purchase the layouts that you create, contact me for information about the benefits of a Studio J membership.

On-Line Store

Fall in Love with Studio J

Fall/Winter 2012 Idea Book

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